Esteemed conductor Wilhelm Furtwangler and the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra delivers a definitive reading of Beethoven’s Symphonies No. 1 & 3. Performing on authentic instruments, the musicians play with sensitivity and skill. Furtwangler, a Beethovenian, brings a sense of excitement and first-class direction. With its impeccable sound quality, this is a worthwhile listen!

About the Mastering
Four engineers at Abbey Road Studios in London have remastered these historic EMI recordings from their original analogue sources for release in pristine hi-def. Between them, Simon Gibson, Ian Jones, Andy Walter and Allan Ramsay have many years of experience remastering archive recordings for EMI and other record labels. The process always starts with finding all of the records and tapes in EMI's archive in London and comparing different sources and any previous CD reissues. We consult each recording's job file, which contains notes about the recording made by the engineer and producer. For example, this sometimes explain why there is more than one set of tapes to choose from. All of the tapes are generally in good condition and we play them on our Studer A80 π inch tape machine, after careful calibration of its replay characteristics.

In order to have the best digital remastering tools at our disposal for the remastering, we transfer from analogue to the digital domain at 96 KHz and 24-bit resolution using a Prism ADA-8 converter and capture the audio to our SADiE Digital Audio Workstation.

Which Format Should I Download?

First time on HDTracks.com? Not sure about what formats to pick? No problem! We offer "high definition"audio in FLAC format, which means you're going to hear everything you've been missing with MP3 and other "lossy audio formats." We also offer AIFF formats and only the highest quality MP3 formats at 320k for some of the albums in our catalog.

If getting the very best sound is important to you, you'll want to choose FLAC audio files for your purchase.